Are Sony Running Out of Ideas?

There’s no denying that Sony started 2011 incredibly strongly. They’ve had a consistent stream of fantastic first party exclusives since the end of 2010 and they’ve gathered some impressive momentum as we head into the summer season and the big show looms on the horizon. That’s right, E3 is mere months away and with Sony’s end of year looking a little less impressive than the first few months, what might they have in store for the future?

Well, with the exception of the assumed announcement and unveiling of Warhawk 2, there’s not a lot that we know about. We can assume that Uncharted 3 and The Last Guardian will get an airing, probably both playable. Resistance 3 should be there in a big way too. Those are what we know about from Sony for the end of this year but that leaves options for the start of next year a little thin.

It’s also reasonable to assume that we’ll see something of the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD remakes. Which brings us to something which might be a major concern: Will HD remakes take the place of new announcements?

Sure, we all love to see old favourites spruced up a bit and put out as collections. We’ve had or are expecting God of War, Sly, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell as well as the Ico games. We’d love to see GTA III Trilogy or a Jak and Daxter collection too. Everyone is clamouring for Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII. We like them. It’s nice to have the option to replay some old favourites and it’s nice to have the opportunity for new players to enjoy them. But we don’t want them to take over.

Apparently, PSM3 has spoken about a rumour that Sony might have a big announcement up its sleeve for E3. That’s nice but we’d like Sony’s big E3 announcements to be about new games, blockbusters and massive franchise continuations. As much as we like an HD remake, it’s not something we’d like to see replace the traditional big news from a show like E3.

Sony have already spoken about their willingness to do more and the trend spreading to Ubisoft and Eidos (Square Enix now) is demonstrative of the popularity that HD rereleases have. It would be a shame if that distracted companies into thinking they can put big new releases on the back burner.

Sony have started this year strongly but with a less impressive back end to the year and virtually nothing hinted at for next year yet, will the recent buzz around these HD collections mean that those are all we’re given? We hope not but when the pre-E3 rumour mill starts firing up with rehashes of older games, we start to worry a little bit about the future for brand new games.